20 Graduation Poems

If you are planning any events for or with upcoming graduates, it is time to start thinking about what you want to do. In this series of short articles, I will be listing materials to help you create an inspirational graduation experience for your friends, children, or family. First, we looked at graduation music , in an article that featured a list of songs for graduation. Not only is graduation music great for graduation parties and events, but the lyrics can be used in graduation speeches, to write something meaningful in yearbooks, or to add a thoughtful touch to a graduation card you are sending out.

Another source for inspirational graduation material is poetry. Many poets have written poetry about graduation, some inspired by their own school graduation experiences, others inspired by their children or grandchildren's graduation.

Contemporary poet Robert Creeley has authored several famous graduation poems that were inspired by the graduation of his children. Here is an excerpt from a graduation poem that he wrote in 1971, which is available at www.poets.org.

This walking on
and on, this
going and coming-
this morning

shines such lovely
light on
all of us
we're home

For more inspirational words on graduation, here is a list of twenty popular graduation poems:

1. "All the World's a Stage" by William Shakespeare

2. "Among School Children" by W.B. Yeats

3. "An Instructor's Dream" by Bill Knott

4. "Arithmetic" by Carl Sandburg

5. "Dreams" by Langston Hughes

6. "First Gestures" by Julia Kasdorf

7. "For the Graduation, Bolinas, 1971" by Robert Creeley

8. "For the Graduation, Bolinas, 1972" by Robert Creeley

9. "For the Graduation, Bolinas, 1973" by Robert Creeley

10. "Hanging Fire" by Audre Lorde

11. "If" by Rudyard Kipling

12. "Knows how to forget (433)" by Emily Dickinson

13. "Metamorphosis" by Billy Collins

14. "My Heart Leaps Up" by William Wordsworth

15. "Post-graduate" by Dorothy Parker

16. "Sense of Something Coming" by Rainer Marie Rilke

17. "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

18. "The Truly Great" by Stephen Spender

19. "The Writer" by Richard Wilbur

20. "What Fifty Said" by Robert Frost

For the compete text of these graduation poems, try www.poets.org, which provides poetry in all its forms, along with commentary at no charge. Have a great graduation!